Club Design

Sex on Gliese 436 b ★★★★★ The first time I wore Club Design was to a Christmas buffet. I’m unsure what psychotic state of mind plagued me at that point, but mistakes were made indeed. As much as I loved sampling it at home, Club Design proved to be too much of a fierce beast to be compatible with carrot casserole, mulled wine and roast beef. Or any food imaginable. So, I got scared and didn’t wear it for a long time until this one April weekend rolled around and found myself picking fragrance suitable for an underground techno event. The choice was obvious, and I liberally doused myself with the colossus that is Club Design. The effect it had on me was magnificent - an exhilarating contradiction of merciless isolation and warmth of familiarity. A place of thundering light and heavy smoke violently permeated with pulsing rhythms and screeching treble. An ecstatic collective higher consciousness that emerges from the shifting swarms of vulnerable people together moving in 130 BPM. To be a human is to share and take part, and it is a beautiful thing to achieve that through the medium of music. Club Design might be a fetid beast at the Christmas table but judge not. Just like the people at this forsaken techno bunker, tenderness crystallizes in places where you least expect it. Many perfumes strive for the trendy industrial coldness, such as CdG Black, but they’re oblivious for the fact that we’re still humans in 2019 and artificial intelligence hasn’t taken over the world yet. At times Club Design portals into such high avant-garde realms that it quite literally smells like the inside of a spaceship, yet it never isolates me from my humanness. It is the spaceship after all that keeps me from meeting my demise on the boiling surface of Gliese 436 b. Soundtrack: Clark - Unfurla Ps. Check out Laudamiel's instagram he shares lots of valuable information on his profile @christophelaudamiel!

It smells exactly like the interior of a new car. I love it, it's unique, masculine, has that strange rubbery leathery clean smell. It's versatile too, you can totally wear it in the winter because of the warm leather, and summer too, because it's also rubbery, pleasantly clean. I place the performance on the lower part of acceptable. It radiates for one-two hours, and then becomes intimate, but is still there. By 5 hours, you get small whiffs when moving around, and after 7-8 hours, it's gone, unless you had clothes that received some sprays. If you want this scent to be a part of your social life, you need to bring the bottle to work to reapply it. Do you usually do that for juice you paid 2+ EUR per ml for? That's the money that can get you extraits with real oud in them, that lasts 20 hours+. Club Design is a luxury perfume, despite their marketing being hipstry and personal and totally relaxed and chilled. It's a leathery and woody luxury perfume, and it won't last you a full day, even if richly sprayed. It's a beautiful and genius scent tho. It really is. EDIT: ( I WAS NOSE BLIND ) I bought this perfume despite my initial thoughts, because I love the scent. I can now confirm that I was likely nose blind during the sample testing. The first spray from the bottle, which has a robust and firm sprayer (and came in a beautiful cloth bag with a metal key ring), immediately filled my bathroom. It stays around for about 15 hours at least. I was complimented 13 hours after applying it. I'm letting the review stay tho, as a lesson and reminder that smell is very hard to assess objectively.

Radiant, somehow sparkling, transparent leather that morphs into soft floral suede, and then a sexy, clean (but with mammalic warmth) musk. All of this with, as mentioned below, the faint shellac of industrial smell like brand new furniture. It’s also interesting because there is a phase where I detect the same aroma chemicals used in Secretions Magnifique only in Club Design they are manipulated differently to add a milky/fruity tinge to the floral leather. This was my favorite of the line and I would guess it will probably be the most popular because it’s easy to wear but with the excitement of something unusual. To simplify my impression imagine Comme Des Garcon released a leather fragrance in line with their takes on Oud, Wood, Black Pepper, Floral Oriental, Incense etc. I wouldn’t be surprised if it smelled something like this. Although, to me, this feels better quality than most CDG fragrances.

I ordered this blind on the strength of Mr. Turin's review in The Guide, and I was not disappointed. Club Design is remarkable in that it offers a photorealistic leather accord (nothing in my collection smells more like actual leather than this) but situates that leather inside a fully realized perfume with a top, middle and drydown. It's not just a special effect. It smells like rubber, suede shrink-wrapped in plastic, factory-fresh, tart grapefruit and currant, dusty, oily Lilly, the kind with those greasy stamens that stain everything, honeyed warm breath and a bunch of other things I can't recognize. Industrial in the best way, it's not trying to smell "natural" and ending up artificial, it's boldly artificial but just for fun. This is the first leather I've smelled that's friendly and extroverted. really great strength, amazing value at the price it goes for. Bravo Mr. Laudamiel!

I really like this. The initial rubbery accord is reminiscent of Bulgari Black, but everything else about this is unique. Futuristic but familiar. A clear, cohesive idea that leaves a distinctive overall impression, but also notes and accords that can be noticed and teased out. Rubber, leather, grapefruit, something green/herbal. All adding up to a singular smell. What I'm trying to say is you just have to smell it. It probably won't smell like you imagine it--it didn't for me. But hopefully, like me, you'll find something stranger and better than you'd imagined.

An ultra-huge note of perfecto leather burning in the smoky volutes of lily and styrax and sliced with the sulfur laser of a grapefruit and blackcurrant accord. After this hypnotizing violence à la Tarantino the naturally leathery side of the mimosa rounded with almond and the jammy muskiness of Atlas cedar suggests the softness of some vivid flesh under a black slim in stretch lambskin. One of a kind of perfume who put you high ...

Being a “club kid” in my younger years, Club Design does bring back fond memories of being in the club, having a good time, feeling sexy, dancing my way through the night. Although, Club Design is very unique, it also smells familiar. Leathery, woody, smokey, warm, a little boozy, rubbery, a little zing and quite hypnotic.

This perfume drones in a dangerously enticing timbre. I am as much afraid of as I am mesmerized by it. It beckons me to sway in a dark corner and hope for someone novel and unknown to take notice, and approach.

Treating leather like no other. A mixture of fear and lust. This is pure kinky sensuality.

nobody buy please bc I need all of the bottles ;((((

I sprayed this scent liberally on my wrists before reading the brief about it being specifically described as a garment spray. However, I suspect that it is not any more potent in the flagged ingredients than many of my vintage perfumes, so I'm not too worried! Club Design is, in a nutshell, a smooth, clean leather scent. Perhaps it is its cleanliness that gives it a slightly plastic edge, but it still works and is pleasant overall. The florals complement the leather accord that forms the backbone of this scent beautifully, and it is softened nicely by the musky base. CD opens with a bold leather accord, smooth and intense, but refined and airy, reminiscent of a new wallet. There is no animalic edge here at all; instead the plastic undertone gives it a clean, synthetic quality which is thankfully subtle. The leather remains dominant throughout, but is complemented beautifully as the scent unfolds and the other notes emerge. Powdery, sweet mimosa, a note I'm partial to, marries nicely with the leather, tempering the synthetic edge. Soft white florals, clean and muted, add a creamy floral tone. The blackcurrant, tart, fresh and cordial-like follows, melding seamlessly with the leather-floral accord, adding some pitch-perfect freshness. As it dries down, the leather is softened by clean, musky notes. A soft woody accord follows in the base, grounding things nicely. Floral hints and fruity remnants add colour, and it fades to a soft, musky skin scent, leathery but clean until final fade. Sillage is strong and longevity is long-lasting. It is unisex, and best worn in autumn/winter. A decent leather scent with points of interest and excellent performance, CD is a clean, non-animalic leather scent. In my opinion, the plastic quality takes from it somewhat, but it is pretty good overall. "Vegan" leather. 4/5.

There are several abstract and frankly strange reviews here, so I was very curious to smell this while waiting for it to arrive. Honestly, regarding uniqueness, this does not disappoint, and if you enjoy 'hunting' for accords out there you will never have smelled before this is something you should go for. So imagine bridging a powdery almost honey-like mimosa that has a soft creamy heliotrope-like gourmand facet, against a dense brown leather note that has a very polished feel as if it was just buffed with a creamy leather conditioner, but without any strong chemical or particular smoky elements to it. I definitely also get a similar lily note as in Passage d'Enfer. So the result is a hefty contrast between the sweet creaminess and the leather, rounded out by musk and sandalwood and benzoin, but not one that is difficult to stomach, unlike the one in Amber Kiso, which really feels industrial and sickening. Club Design, despite the similarities note-wise to Amber Kiso, feels conceptually exactly opposite to it, it's smooth, well tempered and mellow throughout, almost like you are smelling the notes through a yellow-tinted filter. It's still a very striking scent, something that will turn heads, but it isn't unwearable by any means.

An off-the-beaten-path scent. For me, it smells like synthetic leather, a department store, the 2000s, aseptic mixed with human/bodily odors, plastic, and new product. The new car, we read on the English Fragrantica: yes, totally. But on this picture with a little strange format (wide, like a photo in panorama mode with those old cameras from the '90s), or sci-fi, are grafted however these light notes, of mimosa and grapefruit, to make it a more lively perfume, always in movement. I don't have the sandalwood very explicitly, nor the lily or black currant, but I vaguely perceive how they could indeed be part of the picture. It's very Comme des Garçons in the "vibe" and I understand why it won the IAO award: it's indeed very original, and interesting. PS: my partner, not yet very detached from his bad gendered habits in perfumery, is a BIG fan.

I smell sweat, the plastic in cheap latex breaking down. Theres a splash of blood, yours or someone elses? You left the club an hour ago but still want more, your friends are bored or sleeping. Theres rubber too, but like a rubber doll rather than tires or condoms. There are hints of florals, like passing gardenias on your walk home. It's alive and dead at the same time which I cant explain, a stasis achieved only by drug use hours before. 7/10.

I used to love this scent, but I guess I’ve gotten bored of it. I have a partial bottle sitting on my shelf for the last couple years if anyone is interested in it.

Sprayed this on the back of my hand without even knowing what it was... leather punches you hard in the nose if you go in for a whiff off the bat. It's pretty strong leather accord and synthetic smelling. Smells like a manufacturing factory with a plasticy accord mixed with leather. It is a bit animalic with a body odorish vibe in it. It's not mainstream and interesting in its build. I don't really smell many like this which is rather interesting.

Club Design opens with a fizzy, petrichor-like humid earthy smell, as well as a pungently marine, almost fishy saltiness. The humid earthiness reminds me of the opening of Thierry Blondeau Narcisse Emoi, while the brash fishy note smells like a relative of Calone to me. Because of the pungency of the opening, and my struggle with most synthetic fishy marine notes, Club Design can be quite nauseating to me, unless on a hot day when the opening evaporates much more quickly. The soft suede leather reveals itself on my skin usually around 2 hours in, and doesn't completely shake off the fizzy humid earthy aspect and pervasive fishy marine note until after about 5 hours. I can see the rubber/new car interior comparison, as the fragrance is indeed quite artifical-smelling for a leather-themed perfume, but more on an overall, abstract level. On a more specific detail level, I'd agree more with the comparison to Hermès Galop, as the suede in both perfumes shares this chewy texture similar to turkish delight to me, as well as an abstract musky fruity undertone. However, the fruity syrup in Galop is replace by fake petrichor and artificial marine notes here at first, and then by a more heightened medicinal bitterness of saffron later on. When those artifical-smelling opening notes completely disappear in the late dry down, Club Design is indeed quite comfortable as a sleek suede skin scent, flankered by a discreet musky fruity woody cedar to my nose. The sillage is usually moderate on my skin, while the longevity is often 8-9 hours with one good spray. My opinions on Club Design have been constantly swinging left and right during those a few weeks when I wore it. At first I was instantly repulsed by the difficult opening notes, then I began to doubt whether its artificality is actually a masterstroke, and again I question myself if I'd given Club Design a second thought if it had come out from a brand with a much lower profile than the Zoo, and again and again. But then, when I compare it to other perfumes that play around the idea of artificiality, such as Vaporocindro and Dinudisit by January Scent Project, Womanity by Thierry Mugler, La Fin du Monde by Etat Libre d'Orange, Club Design doesn't feel as compelling as them to me. While I was initially taken aback by most of them, the dissonance between unabashedly synthetic elements and more natural-smelling elements soon evolves into an unexpected harmony as well as a fascinating, complex puzzle that draws me in. But Club Design just feels like layering an elegant suede perfume with openly synthetic elements to make it more "edgy". The suede skin scent is proper, the synthetic petrichor and marine notes are provocative, and a salty suede leather skin scent has great potential, but the end result in Club Design doesn't seem to elevate the idea beyond individual elements. As a side note, I only tested Club Design on my skin, but haven't yet tried it as a fabric scent as it's intended (apparently its coumarin and safranal exceeds the upper limit for a skin perfume according to the official website). It's possible that it might work better on fabric, but as a personal perfume, I would only recommend Club Design if you're looking for a scent reminiscent of "new car interior" with an unapologetically synthetic vibe.

First impression & I was knocked over & please forgive but it is what I first smelled: Marinated in pot of chili where the beans were replaced by cumin and the pot is leather-F’ing nice car upholstery ple/leather . It escalated until it filled the room my house all furnishings replaced in leather. Not to be worn unless you want to be rode like a horse.

This is a strange one and you can pretty much tell that by the pyramid. It's relentless,pungent beast mode and a alpha male scent. Very dry and leathery with musk and a pinch and I mean just a pinch of florals. I find it unwearable.

I really thought I knew where this perfume was going when I put it on. Like probably everyone else, I sprayed it on in a store per the recommendation of Luca Turin, who told me to expect sweet rubber. When I put it on, I kind of instantly regretted it, as it had this aggressively smoky air that I knew was dead wrong for summer. I was trying to figure out what it was that turned me off, and the memory of being 14 and stealing sips of alcohol from parents' cupboards rushed back to me. It smelled the harsh, astringent way I thought absolutely all alcohol tasted at that age, the way scotch tastes to me now. I decided that was what it was, scotch, and that that was why this perfume was solidly not for me. But I went back into the unrelenting, thick New York summer and smelled my arm again, and something about it felt weirdly right for the environment. I was walking towards Canal Street, a strip notorious for pollution, noise, artifice. Turns out rubber fits right in with the smell of gasoline, plastic, and fake leather. Leather started to make itself more known in my perfume too, taking that scotchy smell over and settling into something industrial but not inhuman, like a new car but dirtier. It's the inside and outside of the new car, the upholstery AND the tires, both sitting inside AND waiting in the repair shop. It reminds me of the long summer days of my mom getting her car fixed, having to wait with an old magazine and a paper cone of water. As I sat in my apartment, I noticed I really liked how I smelled, and assumed it was one of the other fruitier, more easily summery perfumes I'd tried on. But it turns out that fruit note is in here too, but in a much less obvious, more interesting way-- one you have to look for, but is unmistakable in how much it helps this land. As those other perfumes faded, it became clearer and clearer that it was Club Design capturing my attention. I really thought I had my mind made up about disliking this when I first sprayed it on, but I guess that's the beauty of perfume, that reason it's something of a dragon-chasing exercise. The most exciting ones unravel like a story, full of twists and turns. This one is really a gem: familiar and unfamiliar, safely dangerous like a good rollercoaster. --- EDIT: Six hours later I crawled into bed and this baby was still going strong. I could still smell it in the crook of my arm for at least half of the next workday. I know I liked it because that staying power made me rejoice instead of wince. I crawled in bed and smelled like I'd rolled around with a boy who looks tough but treats me right. He's good-bad, but he's not evil. Tell me more, tell me more...

What a unique fragrance this is. Leave it up to Laudamiel to come up with something like this. The opening to me is straight up leather boots. It's quite an achievement on how close this smells to real leather accessories. After some time it gets more musky and a slight sweet accord emerges. Could be the coumarin, but either way, it's unusual but very wearable. Definitely masculine. More suitable for colder weather but I could see people pulling this off year round without issue. I keep coming back to this one as it's so interesting. I don't reall smell any lily, black currant or grapefruit, but overall a nice leather-musk type scent which should at least be sampled should you get a chance. Edit: after some more testing I now get the grapefruit or at least a citric accord in the opening but it's buried in the back. A bit more floral as well. Interesting. 8/10

What really gets me about this fragrance, is just how clean and airy it is. It is SO clean, like clinical levels of clean. I feel as I stick my nose into my arm to get sniff of this, that my nose is actually passing through a black hole and I am smelling the smell of an expansive universe. To put it into terms more understandable, it smells like fresh car tires and new plastics and leather interiors, inside of a vast glossy white showroom with large gloss tile floors and a tall ceiling.

Perfume focused on a leather accord, that's evident. For me what makes it different from other perfumes focused on that accord is something slightly salty-herbal similar to an chinese ink smell in the background. Also a small handful of flowers printed on this synthetic leather. Harmonious, daring, intriguing. Unfortunately for me, that ink note distracts me from the rest of the perfume.

I’m beginning to wonder if I got a dud bottle in my discovery kit, because frankly this smells like nothing to me. There’s a vague clean “detergent” aroma but the supposed smoke and leather are nowhere to be found. As it dries soapy notes are coming out more. Huh. I don’t get it.